Incendio
by deweydelle
Summary: After a muggle home goes up in flames, Harry Potter is called in to investigate a highly atypical case. The motive is clear, but the crime leaves the wizarding community divided.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Takes place in summer 2015. The police procedural format belongs to NBC, probably; everything else belongs to JKR.

* * *

All that summer, the only thing anyone could talk about was the fire.

It had roared up out of nowhere, hot and fast, consuming the little two bedroom house in Ailsworth, Cambridgeshire and leaving a blackened husk in its wake. The garage and the lad's room alone had survived intact, but the lad, who had been home alone, had not.

The lad's name was Toby Elliott, but that wasn't important. He was going to be fine. What was important was that Anthony Travers had started the fire. A bachelor and a loner, he had been aggressive toward his muggle neighbors before; had been threatening enough that they had filed a complaint with the police, which was, people noted significantly, _on the record_. Also on record: Travers' Death Eater connections, a history of supporting pureblood causes and documented anti-muggle sentiment.

But that wasn't all. Not only did Travers hate muggles, he had a personal history to fuel his resentment - in the trial after the war, his family had lost most of their money and their ancestral home, beautiful Brancebeth Hall, to pay war reparations. As his Death Eater brother died during the war, Travers' family was forced to pay twice over for his misdeeds, with every Galleon they had.

Surely Anthony Travers wanted to kill every muggle he set eyes on. The case was open and shut and the culprit was obvious to anyone with half a brain.

"You've got a pureblood fanatic - brother a former Death Eater! - living next door to a muggle family. It couldn't have taken much. Their dog takes a shit in his garden, the lad kicks a football over the fence - could have been anything to set off a maniac like that. Travers cracks. _Incendio_. Whoosh! He's got a nice cozy fire going until the muggles show up with their hoses."

Whatever it might have taken to drive Travers to arson was beside the point, however, as Travers couldn't have set fire to the Elliotts' house. He had been with his mother in Kent that day, helping her with some chores. Cornelia Travers was over 100 and not spry; age had left her foggy and irritable. As the Elliotts' house burned, Anthony Travers had been tending to a gnome infestation that had become so rooted they had begun creeping into the house and stealing his mother's food. His mother's testimony might not have been reliable, but several neighbors reluctantly vouched that they had heard him howling and cursing at the little beasts.

Well, if Travers hadn't set this house on fire, it was just a matter of time.

More than likely, a former lover had done it. Cleveland Shunpike had grown up not ten miles from the boy's mother, they had gone to the same primary school, the same year. And she was _pretty_ , you could see in her pictures, even though they never moved, and friendly - all the muggles in town seemed to know her. Catherine Elliott and Cleveland Shunpike dated while he was home for the summer from school, he had been the other "C" from

 _C+C_

 _2003_

 _Love always_

that had been carved on the oak tree in her garden. But Catherine chucked Cleveland for Toby's father, who got her pregnant when she was 18. Cleveland was a strange young man, his moods unpredictable. All that rage at Catherine, building up over time, as he watched her discard Foster and take up with another man who still wasn't Cleveland Shunpike. Finally he had snapped.

Cleveland Shunpike didn't really remember Catherine Elliott, though. Yes, they had gone to primary school together, but he was only there for two years, before his mother saved up enough to quit her job at the shoe store and homeschool him so he wouldn't be behind when he started at Hogwarts. And his family spent most of their summers in Wales; he had never had a girlfriend in Ailsworth, and said he hadn't spoken to Catherine since they were about 13 when he saw her at the ice skating rink.

Cleveland Shunpike might have been lying - it didn't matter. The truth would come out eventually. And if not him, there were any number of other prospects. Anyone could have crossed Catherine Elliott's path and fallen hard, whether it was a quiet affair, a fling between marriages, a lonely man growing obsessed with the young mother he saw at the market and deciding he had to free her from her humdrum muggle existence.

But no one in the wizarding world seemed to know anyone who had ever met Catherine Elliott; not by her current name, or her former (Foster), or even by her maiden name, Caty Cutcliffe, an 18 year old girl with dyed black hair and dark eyeliner that might have made some people anxious but for her wide, dimpled smile. Some people who had grown up near Ailsworth or Castor said she looked awfully familiar, that they had seen her on some wizard's arm. Perhaps they had, but no one had yet identified that wizard.

Could it have been the husband? Did he have a jealous girlfriend? A secret past in the magical world? Had he improbably become ensnared in debt to a wizard or, worse, the goblins? These theories tended to bore everyone, as Trevor Elliott was considerably less charismatic than his wife, and were seldom discussed.

"Too far-fetched," everyone said, and continued to speculate about anyone who might want to murder Catherine.

But there had been no lover. There was no arson. These stories existed in the fevered imaginations of housewives, barflies and journalists bored with a slow news season and a Ministry in recess. The fire had just happened. It was an old house and a hot, dry summer. An unattended hot plate had caused it, or an overused extension cord, muggleborns explained knowledgeably. It happened all the time.

Extension cords were very hard to explain, and harder still to understand, by people who had never used a lightbulb or a laptop before, particularly after those people had consumed several pints of beer, so this line of inquiry tended to be derailed by another party asking belligerently, "Well, if it was a _muggle_ fire, why are Aurors investigating? Not enough to keep them busy with wizard crimes? Made honest citizens of all of us, have they?"

"Perish the thought," someone else would call out, and glasses were clinked.

People who thought this was a matter of bigotry or revenge or a simple house fire were blind fools. This fire was much bigger than that. This wasn't the work of a lone pureblood fanatic, this was part of a campaign of violence against muggles perpetrated by a secret network of former Death Eaters and Death Eater sympathizers, financed by the Malfoys; or else part of an operation by former Order members and Ministry insiders to discredit wizards who sympathized with pureblood ideals; no, these weren't Death Eaters, but a new cult, because this fire looked just like the fire in Leeds a year ago, and everyone knew that had been tied to Wizards for a New Day even if the Ministry wasn't ready to acknowledge it; this wasn't Wizards for a New Day, this was the Ministry striking back at the muggle government because exchange rates were down and the Galleon was affected, that was how these things happened - couldn't you _see_ that?

After all, they wouldn't have put Harry Potter on the case if it weren't something big. Everyone, at least, could agree on that.

Harry Potter liked to close his cases quickly, move onto the next before the bureaucrats could come after him with their questions and their fine tooth combs, but this one lingered. The Aurors were still working the area - but carefully, carefully, so as not to alarm the muggles. They even went to see Toby in the hospital. Everyone marveled that the lad had talked to Harry Potter and thought he was just a _policeman_ , some bumbling fool with a pension and a small town officer's slow reflexes. Aurors had fake badges and identification they used when they needed to interview muggles, and Harry Potter's fake police badge had been by far the most impressive thing about him to Toby.

Once in a while someone would say something like, "I'm just glad the lad's alright." Or, "Can't we talk about something else? Makes me ill, thinking so much about it."

The attention wasn't unseemly though really because Toby was going to be fine. Toby had been in hospital covered in burns but the papers said he would make a full recovery. His parents marveled that there wasn't a scratch on him, and his mother thanked God for his mercy. On the news on telly and on YouTube she wept at Toby's side in his hospital bed, and her husband, Toby's stepfather, wept as the doctors wondered at this astonishing medical marvel, but the witches and wizards who speculated about this did not see these clips. While they understood that fires were deadly, most of them did not understand what third degree burns and smoke inhalation really meant, and they had not seen Toby when the firefighters rescued him from the two bedroom house in Farrant Court in Ailsworth; if they had, they might have wept, too, to see him smiling and playing games on his mother's phone.

Muggleborns pointed to Toby's recovery as evidence of the incredible advances made by modern medicine in the last decade.

"Muggles are catching up," they said. "Technology's changing faster and faster."

They dreamed of parents and siblings and cousins free from cancer, safe from heart disease, vehicular fatalities a distant memory, like polio. If doctors could save that little boy, surely they couldn't be so far from any number of breakthroughs Others looked at this progress with growing alarm; if muggles could heal themselves now, they would live longer, advance faster, their population would crowd out wizardkind.

All of this excitement, though, was a trifle premature.

"It's a miracle," Catherine Elliott had moaned in one oft-played clip. "It's a bloody miracle. God gave my baby back to me." She wrapped her arms around Toby, her tired hazel eyes wet, and he smiled uncertainly, frozen with the iPhone in his small hands.

Harry Potter watched the YouTube clips, and the local news coverage, which he watched on the television at the hotel room he had let for the past several weeks to give the appearance of being a policeman, doing police work, investigating a crime.

It was not so different, pretending to be a policeman. There were plenty of days Harry still felt like he was pretending to be an Auror. And then there were cases like this one, that were all make believe, all fiction, because up was down and nothing made sense and all the rules were part of a strange Wonderland logic, that he had been trying to understand for the past 24 years and realized only now that he never truly would.

The case had worn on longer than anyone would have liked, and there seemed to be no ending in sight. Catherine and her husband Trevor had been at first stunned by his presence - _a police officer, talking to our son? Toby's a good boy_ \- and then reassured, as the media started to swarm around the mysterious fire and the pretty young mother and the miracle boy. But as the days wore on, they grew increasingly concerned by the fact that Harry lingered; that when Toby got better, the case did not go away.

He stopped in one morning with a few follow up questions, and escorted Catherine down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. By now he knew that Catherine took her coffee black, with two sugars (Trever was a tea drinker - milk, no sugar). She had been grateful, the second day he was there, that he had remembered her order, but now she seemed to find it invasive, drawing her long cardigan tightly around herself.

Answering Harry's questions, she was distracted - _I don't know, I told you, I don't remember_ \- but Harry was patient. He waited.

Finally, she burst out, as if the question were something on a leash that she was no longer able to contain, "Do you really believe someone did this - " she was barely able to bring herself to say it, lowering her voice to just above a whisper - "On purpose?"

"We're still investigating that," he told her. "We can't say anything for certain right now."

It was one of a thousand lies Harry had to tell her, every time they spoke.

The matter Harry was investigating has been an entirely purposeful act, although it had been carried out with shaking hands and trepidation; carried with it enormous consequences, even the potential to destroy someone's life. But as he watched Catherine retreat into herself, gazing with fear and wonder through the windows of the hospital room at her sleeping son, he could not bring himself to regret that someone had done this.

If they hadn't, Toby Elliott would have died.


	2. Chapter 2

In Cho's life there was Before Benjamin, and After Benjamin.

They had been introduced through friends when they were both at university in London. Although she had been pleasantly surprised by how handsome he was, she had already known she wasn't looking for anything serious, and besides, he would be leaving London in the fall to start his oncology training program at Cambridge.

By the time Benjamin left London, they were engaged; when she finished her program in radiography the following year, she joined him, and they married soon after, and from that day on she was Cho Kelly, and her life was filled with joy.

Life with Benjamin was an exclamation point, the feeling of yelling at the top of your lungs at the summit of a mountain; there was joy, joy at last, in every crack and every crevice, bubbling forth from the most unexpected places, like striking oil in a remote desert thousands of miles from civilization. All the tattered scraps of her life had been stitched together, resentments and pain and failure made whole; not erased, but accepted, as part of a long, winding journey.

She had hated that her mother made her study muggle subjects and take lessons with a tutor on her breaks from school - _We want you to have a well-rounded education_ , her mother said, but Cho saw lurking behind there the words _Just in case_. Cho did not like this "in case" because it implied doubt; it betrayed other possibilities, possibilities that Cho didn't want to consider. She could not doubt her path, or she would lose sight of it. She refused to see until it would have been too late that she could not remain a part of the wizarding world, and finally then, she thanked her mother for spoiling all of her holidays.

After everything that had happened she had wanted to be as far away as possible from the wizarding world. There was no justice there, no laws that could really stop anyone from doing whatever they pleased. Magic was too wild, too uncontrollable, to exist in such a flimsy system; corruption had eaten away at the wizarding world to its very core. She did not want to spend the rest of her life either fighting injustice or being a victim of it, so she simply left after she completed her NEWTs and never looked back. Under the circumstances, she was supposed to turn in her wand, but the chaos in the Ministry was such at the time that such procedures were the last thing anyone was concerned with.

Cho didn't mind; she might not want to be a part of the wizarding world, but a wand meant never having to mop or do the washing up by hand.

She did not tell Benjamin about herself, not immediately, which proved difficult. He had a fast-moving mind that weighed and processed information immediately and demanded more. Benjamin had not been content with Cho's standard story that she had attended boarding school in Scotland, he wanted more, he wanted to know everything. When Benjamin was interested in something he adopted an interrogation style of questioning - _Where was it? What did you study? Who were your friends? What do you mean you didn't have football? -_ which many people found intimidating or even offensive, but to Cho it was gratifyingly direct.

Gradually she told him that it was a school for people with special talents; when that led him to assume she had gone to a professional children's school, she let him.

In Cho's life there was Magic, and after.

For years she only used her wand for chores. She forgot about it, most of the time. All the spells and conveniences she had thought she could never live without - _Lumos, Reparo, Incendio_ \- seemed simply out of place in her new life, a beloved ottoman moved to a new apartment that no longer fit the decor. In the bright lights of the hospital, there was no need for Lumos.

That was until she met Jacynth Downey.

Jacie was eight years old and loved unicorns, riding her bicycle and drawing. She was rapidly dying of brain cancer.

Cho smiled and gently joked with her as she ran the X-rays, as Cho had done with dozens of other patients, young, old, brave, weeping, tired, frustrated, calm; but this time it felt different, it felt all wrong. Jacie was in such great pain and Cho knew how to make her feel better. What could possibly be the harm?

She could not cure Jacie's brain cancer; the disease could not attack wizard bodies, and so they had no cure, but Cho could ease her pain, give her happiness and sweet dreams for the rest of her life.

Cho had taken the job at Peterborough City Hospital because it was the same hospital at which her mother, a witch, worked. A small healing center for specialized procedures had been constructed on top of City Hospital, to provide a sort of cover - if any witches or wizards entering had sprouted hideous lesions or extra body parts and were spotted by muggles, at least muggles would assume they were going into the hospital and wouldn't alert any authorities.

Cho had lunch with her mother the day she began to help Jacie, but she did not tell her. The constant bustle of magical activity from the Peterborough Healing Centre would offer her cover from the Ministry of Magic, but she could not trust her fretful, law-abiding mother to afford her the same protection.

When Jacie died, sixth months later, her mother hugged Cho, tears in her eyes, and told her that Cho had been Jacie's favorite person at the hospital. Cho embraced Mrs. Downey with a leaden heart.

This was the only time, Cho told herself. Making a habit of this would be extraordinarily dangerous. But having begun, stopping no longer seemed like an option.

It had been going on for over a year before she worked up the nerve to tell Benjamin about the secret project that had been taking up so much of her time and energy. He had already inferred much about Cho's education that she had been unwilling to tell him; he had certainly cottoned on quickly to the fact that he no longer needed to tend to the dusting, or remember to take the chicken out of the freezer in the morning that they'd be having for dinner that night. By now, when he asked her, in exasperated awe, how she had managed to air out his wet swim trunks for a spontaneous trip to the lake, he did not laugh when she responded, simply, "Magic."

He did not laugh, either, when she told him about her activities. Benjamin paced, up and down, down and up, too many thoughts and too much energy to be contained, until finally he whipped around to her, his face alive.

"You're telling me you can make people feel better. Make them hurt less. And this is the _first_ time you've done this?"

She tried to explain the Statute of Secrecy, knowing he would not understand the delicate balance between the wizard and muggle worlds that needed to exist in order for both to function. Benjamin seemed befuddled and even betrayed.

"You're not even one of them anymore, what do you care about their laws?"

That Cho could have stood by even once when she had the power to help was beyond Benjamin's comprehension. To him the Statute of Secrecy seemed a quirk of meaningless bureaucracy, no different from many of the hospital regulations they obeyed for the form of it rather than because they recognized any real necessity or urgency behind them.

"There could be real consequences," she told him. "Not just for me. For the hospital. For the patients. For you, even."

"What are the chances - of consequences?" He snapped quickly, not angry, but intent.

She shrugged. "'I'm careful."

He nodded. "I trust you," he said. "I'm proud of you."

They made love and then ordered Thai food, stayed up most in the night lying in bed with bottles of red wine while she told him about magic, showed him moving pictures of her teenage self in school robes and pointed hat; told him about the war, about Cedric. She told him that dragons and vampires and werewolves were real; set a piece of paper on fire with a quick _Incendio_ to show that this was real, all of it, and neither of them were dreaming, because too often now her former life felt like a dream, a million miles away, a star she had seen once.

"You gave all this up?" he asked her, tucking her hair behind her ear. "How?"

"It's not all that great, really," she laughed. "I quite like the internet."

"You get both," he said, settling back and regarding her with new eyes. "You get all of it. You have Google and a wand."

"You make me sound greedy."

"I'm greedy," he said, softly. "I want it, too. I know you have to be careful, but - Cho, you have to do this. I know it's a risk. But it's worth it."

But that was all Before Emma. After Emma, everything was different.

She was a serious girl who wanted to get the business of childhood out of the way as quickly as possible. There was not a speck of whimsy in her; Benjamin jokingly called her "our little accountant." Her constant refrain was "Tell me what's real."

"She's all you," Benjamin told Cho, after Emma sniffily rejected the book _Llama Llama Red Pajama_ as a bedtime story because "llamas don't wear pajamas."

Emma was Cho, from her fine, soft dark hair down to her tiny, perfect toenails. There were echoes of Benjamin in her laugh and in the sunshine delight of her smile, in her boldness and her inquisitive nature - "Why, Mummy?" Emma asked constantly, head tilted.

The long nights that Cho used to spend at the hospital, sitting up with patients, or weekends at home brewing potions that would be offered as "juices" or poultices wrapped up as heat packs were now all for Emma. Benjamin observed her new routine without comment. Their strong convictions and desire to help others were what had brought both of them to the medical profession, and even more so what had drawn them to one another. But what were convictions, when there was Emma?

Emma was five now, and magic was less and less a part of Cho's life. She found she seldom carried her wand with her; there were too many other things to carry now, Cheerios and books and wipes filling up every spare inch of her bag. It was purely by chance that she happened to have it with her the day of the fire.

It had been a hectic morning; Emma had misplaced her favorite doll, and while Cho searched the house and cleaned up the breakfast dishes, Benjamin had packed her bag and, on instinct, had stuck her wand into its customary place in one of the side pockets and zipped it up, where it remained until Cho's shaking fingers extracted it hours later.

After dropping Emma off at school, she had been late, and had to park in a different area of the hospital. As she badged in, longing for coffee and hoping there wasn't an 8am appointment she had forgotten, her friend Shanta closed her fingers around Cho's wrist.

"Did you hear?" she whispered.

There had been a fire in Ailsworth. There had been a little boy.

The little boy had been home alone, sleeping, his father gone to work and his mother at the corner store buying milk for breakfast. Returning, she had rounded to corner to her street to see smoke billowing, water gushing, everything blackened, the street full of crying neighbors and paramedics.

"I was only gone for a minute," the mother stammered over and over, her eyes wet and glassy.

Cho did not want to know, but she had to know. The attendants in the ICU murmured about the risk of sepsis, the scars. She could see in their eyes that it did not matter. The boy would not live.

He was not conscious when Cho slipped into the room, the only mercy he had been given. She clutched a bag with hastily packed poultices and sloshing vials from the small supply of potions ingredients she maintained, and with her wand ensured that they wouldn't be disturbed. Outside, the attendants and the surgeon continued to discuss the case in heavy voices, but it never occurred to them to enter the room to tend to the boy.

He did not stir as she began to work, but after the first hour or so, when the worst of the burns, the waxy, yellow skin on his upper arm and torso, had been restored. His foggy eyes sought hers and his mouth opened and closed as he struggled to speak through the thick fog of pain dulling potion she had given him.

"Shh," she whispered, pointing her wand and murmuring _Obliviate_.

In the cafeteria after, she sat with a cup of coffee, turning her phone over and over in her hands. Benjamin would want to know, but it was better that he did not. The less anyone else knew, the better.

In the end she went on with her day, ignored Benjamin's pointed questions over dinner. It was like floating in the ocean, feeling the sunlight against your closed eyelids, knowing that on the beach people laughed and shouted and played but hearing only the waves and water.

When Detective Inspector Potter arrived, though, she knew it could only be quiet for so long.

He did not seek her out when he arrived, though he must have known she had there; even the Ministry's shoddy records could not be that lacking. At least, when he ran into her in the cafeteria, on the third or fourth day his team had been at the hospital, he did not bother to affect surprise.

The wait was agony. She did not sleep and barely ate. Benjamin thought her stress was due to the media attention on the hospital and the police investigation, and she could not tell him the truth, so when he asked Emma to pick out flowers for her, when he made her tea and encouraged her to have a lie-in on Saturday afternoon, she smiled and thanked him. In truth nothing was worse than lying in a dark room by herself, where her mind endlessly played out every possible scenario, all the grim and dark and frightening ways this could be resolved.

She wanted to shake Harry, or scream at him. "I did it, and I'd do it again, and you can't stop me!" She would run away, she decided; take Emma and Benjamin and fly to Canada, where they could farm ducks. She would fight them with everything she had. She would break down sobbing, and beg for mercy. She had done the right thing, and she would not back down.

But when Harry came to her, open and calm, his glasses askew and his hair mussed, she felt a steadiness inside that overcame the terror and the anger. Underneath the ill fitting brown suit he wore, the badge dangling from his neck, the lines around his eyes, this was just Harry, a boy she had been to school with all those years ago.

"Could we speak privately, Cho? I have a few questions I'm hoping you can clear up."


	3. Chapter 3

"What am I looking at, here?"

Ginny sat cross legged in the armchair in front of the fireplace, her hair tied up in a messy ponytail and a half-finished mug of tea on the stand next to her. In the fire Percy had been speaking for at least five minutes without pausing for breath.

"It's the third link in the email I sent you," Percy said, exasperated. "The _Daily Mail_ article."

Ginny sighed and opened it on her tablet and was immediately accosted by glaring full screen ads. She hated the internet.

 _Fireproof! Miracle boy's mum shares her spellbinding story of son saved from fire that razed their home: 'God was looking out for us'_

 _\- Toby Elliott, 9, escapes fire in Ailsworth, Cambridgeshire_

 _\- Electrical fire started in kitchen, rapidly destroyed two-bedroom house_

 _\- Boy makes miraculous recovery at Peterborough City Hospital 10km away_

\- ' _PCH is a first-class facility that proves the NHS sets a global standard for care'_

 _Published 8:03am GMT 20 July 2015_

"This looks like rubbish," Ginny said, scrolling through.

Percy expelled a sigh of impatience that she could hear even through the crackling Floo connection. "Look at the foot of the article, Ginny."

Trying not to roll her eyes, she focused on the last line. _Additional reporting by Donald Gudgeon._

Ginny hissed involuntarily. Donald Gudgeon was the reporter the _Prophet_ had assigned to the Aisling fire. _Fuck._

"So?" she said to Percy, wondering what on earth Gudgeon could have contributed to this utter pile of tripe. "Gudgeon made a few extra quid. Merlin knows he needs it."

"You know as well as I do he's out of bounds," Percy snapped. "There's to be an investigation. I merely wanted to make you aware so you have a chance to get your receipts in order. I warn you they won't hold back just because it's not your section. The Ministry has been eyeing the _Prophet_ for some time now. This kind of sloppy oversight - "

"Aren't _you_ out of bounds - giving a family member the inside dish?"

"Forgive me for thinking of you," Percy said stiffly.

"Have a lunch break, Percy. I promise not to share any of your embarrassing stories with the bureaucrats."

"Good _bye_ , Ginny," he huffed, and was gone from the fire in a whoosh.

Ginny immediately grabbed another handful of Floo powder and flung it into the fireplace. "Hermione," she called.

Her sister-in-law's face, looking harassed, her hair sticking out at every imaginable angle, appeared in the fire. " _What_? Oh, Ginny, hello. Have you spoken with Harry?"

"He left for work before I woke up. What's going on over there? Percy just Flooed in a right state. Is there really going to be an investigation at the _Prophet_? This is a really bad time - "

"You're talking about bad timing!" Hermione said shrilly. "I could _murder_ Don Gudgeon - we have to expedite a social security number, vehicle registration and mock up a gas bill, all so he can collect £300. And that's on top of everything else!"

"What's everything else?"

"You haven't talked to Harry?"

"Not since you asked me six seconds ago."

"You really ought to talk to Harry - I've got to go now, the DVLA's ringing back - I'll let you know what I hear."

Hermione disappeared, and Ginny put out the fire with a moody jerk of her wand. With so many family members working at the Ministry, it felt as though she were constantly playing catch up, never fully following their inside Quidditch talk no matter how hard she tried. As the youngest of seven children, the sensation was all too familiar, and she enjoyed it no better as an adult than she had as a child.

Talk to Harry. As though Hermione could not have relayed whatever information was so desperately important! They both knew Ginny wouldn't hear about it until dinner, if Harry was even home by then - he was waist-deep into this case and sinking fast.

Well, there was no need to absorb herself in her family member's careers - Ginny had her own to keep her busy. She pushed herself out of the armchair to have a shower and dress before she headed into the Prophet's offices in London.

Glancing down at her mobile as she rolled up the sleeves of her thin chambray button down blouse, she frowned. On top of a text from her father ( _Ginny.. Pls Floo your mother she is worried. Dad xx_ ) she saw that the wizarding news blog _Portkey_ last post showed a photo of her husband glancing down at his watch, with the headline:

AUROR POTTER - RUNNING OUT OF TIME?

Ginny refused to click through to read the article - if they had anything substantial, she told herself, they would have alluded to it in the headline. _Portkey_ was many things - discreet was not one of them. Still, she pulled herself away from the screen with great effort.

While few witches and wizards owned personal computers of any kind, not wanting to bother to install electricity in their homes, two years ago a less invasive alternative had been presented. A small company called Wizarding Wireless had pioneered a small device that could be plugged into the headphone jack of most mobile phones, making them able to be influenced by a small but growing range of spells. The muggleborn co-founders of Wizarding Wireless called the attachment Blue Fairy, after a muggle fairy story, and designed it as a tiny pair of beating gossamer wings.

Although Ginny had waited in line bleary-eyed with Ron and George outside a shop in Mayfair to get a Blue Fairy for their father the morning they debuted, only Ginny had so far purchased one for herself. Six months or so ago Ginny had grudgingly acquiesced to the convenience of checking Quidditch scores on the go without constantly needing to pop into pubs to listen to the wireless, but vowed to use her mobile only for work and texting Harry dirty pictures when she was bored.

"For work" was too blurry a line not to be exploited, however, and Ginny quickly found herself checking her mobile when she woke up in the morning; scrolling through when she was waiting in line at the shops; checking stats and transfer rumors before she headed into an interview with a reserve player. Blue Fairy was becoming more and more essential, and Ginny was having a more and more difficult time justifying why that was all bad.

She looked in on Lily and Albus before she left - the children were out in the garden playing while their part-time nanny, Sophie, curled up in a lawn chair reading a magazine. Jamie was away for the week in Wales joining his friend Evan Tompkins and his family on holiday, and Ginny suspected Sophie was enjoying the peace and quiet. Jamie would be starting at Hogwarts this fall; Ginny could not bear to think how empty the house would feel without him.

"Behave," she told them.

If only she could issue the same admonition to her fellow reporters, she thought longingly as she stepped out of the lift and onto the fifth floor, where the _Prophet_ 's news and sports departments had been formed out of the teeming chaos of an ambivalent universe.

Above the whirring typewriters, hooting owls, dull droning of interviews playing back on Pocket Pensieves and Magic Mnemonics, the measured tones of the Wizarding Wireless Network playing from several radios around the room, and reporters shouting at one another over it all, it was amazing that Ginny could heard her own name ring out across the room, clear as a bell.

"Oi, Potter's in!"

"Potter!"

"Potter - how about Correia going over to the Wasps?"

"Ginny, what have you heard?" Crispin Duley, the briefs editor, pushed his way to her side, needy and rumpled and far too close to her face. The ambush forced her flush against the Beat Board, where press releases, requested reports, and other materials would appear.

"Someone's told me you're the most annoying cunt they've ever met, Crispin - can't recall who."

"It was his mother told me, last night," Trulock said, reaching over Ginny's shoulder to snatch a few sheets of parchment from the Board.

"My mother's dead," Crispin snapped.

"Is that why she was just lying there?" Trulock asked indifferently. Not lifting his eyes from the page, he added, "Potter, Kemp wants you."

Caspar Kemp was the news editor of the _Prophet_ ; as Gudgeon's boss she would need to speak to him anyway, to warn him about Percy's pointless little crusade.

Trulock crossed the newsroom with her to Kemp's office. Raising her hand to knock, she told him, "Bugger off."

"I'm to meet with him as well," he said smugly.

"What on earth does Kemp want with you?"

"I'm reporting on the Ailsworth fire, now Gudgeon's shit the bed. I've got something Kemp ought to see."

"Bloody hell, come in," Kemp yelled.

Ginny opened the door before Trulock could reach it. "Caspar - "

Kemp was almost invisible behind a teetering mountain of parchment. A slight man with a wispy crown of hair, a prominent belly and heavy pouches under his eyes, a more meek woman than Ginny might still have been intimidated by the dark scowl on Kemp's face as she pushed into the office with Trulock breathing down her neck.

"Fresh from the Board, sir," Trulock interrupted her, his face alive, brandishing the parchment. "They've brought her in. This comes straight from Boniface, he's been waiting at the visitor's entrance to the Ministry all day."

"Potter, what do you know?" Kemp asked, taking the parchment from Trulock. "This woman they've been talking to - this Cho Kelly - what's your husband told you?"

"He's told me nothing, as it's an ongoing investigation and I'm a member of the press." She felt heat rising in her chest and willed herself to be calm. With everything that she had accomplished in her life, the fact that so often people still saw her primary contribution as being her husband's wife made her want to unleash hell.

"You're a sports writer! There's - it's - look here, Potter. You know I wouldn't ask this ordinarily. But we've got a mess on our hands. The Ministry has been airtight on this case, they haven't spilled an ounce. All the usual drips are stopped up tight."

To call their sources "drips" would be to compare a hippogriff to a budgie. Up to now it had been taken as read that they could have a guided tour of Department of Mysteries with ice cream cake afterward if any of the reporters so much as batted their eyelashes.

"And on top of that, Gudgeon, that fool - "

"Caspar, that's what I was hoping to talk to you about. The Ministry is going to be looking into - "

But Trulock interrupted again. "Boniface has sent a photo as well, sir, it's good - front page, I think - have a look."

Ginny caught a glimpse of the photo on the parchment over her shoulder and bit her lip to conceal her sharp intake of breath.

Cho Chang, clad in a boxy blue outfit, was looking over her shoulder, her dark eyes haunted. An arm that Cho recognized as Harry's from the scars on his hand - _I must not tell lies_ \- rested on her back. She could see his neck and jawline at the edge of the photo, but his face was out of frame, unknowable.

"She's wearing scrubs, sir, you can see, and that's Auror Potter - you recognize the scars - "

" _I know who Harry Potter is_ ," Kemp spat at Trulock. "Go write. Bring me 12 inches on Cho Kelly in an hour or Cuddington's taking over."

"Cuddington's out sick, sir, I'm the only reporter who - "

"Write!" Kemp snapped, slamming the door shut behind Trulock with a bang from his wand. He grimaced.

"Cuddington's hungover again?"

"Oh, no. No, it's perfectly ordinary for 45-year-old wizards to be laid up with a cold mid-July. I should fire him."

"If you fired every news writer who Flooed in hungover, you'd be left with Trulock," Ginny pointed out.

Kemp sighed and straightened the parchment with Boniface's, squinting at the photo. Cho turned to look over her shoulder once more, Harry's fingers lightly pressing into her back.

"Do you know her?" Kemp asked. "She's about your age. Went to Hogwarts."

"I knew her a bit. We were in the D.A. together."

Kemp looked up with interest.

"I didn't know her well - she was in Ravenclaw. You know."

Kemp, who had been a Ravenclaw, knew well how little the two houses tended to interact. "Can you give me anything?"

"For Trulock? A kick in the teeth, maybe."

"Potter."

She pressed her palms flat against the desk to stop herself from fidgeting. "I should really speak with Harry first," she admitted.

"This has to make the evening edition, Potter, it can't wait. _Portkey_ and _The Augurey_ will have slimed all over the story by tomorrow morning. We need access."

Kemp and the rest of the editorial staff at the Prophet detested the blogs that had sprung up in these still-nascent days of Blue Fairy, not without cause. Ginny had suffered through endless presentations from consulting groups about why the wizarding mobile trend was not something the _Prophet_ needed to worry about; she was well acquainted with the statistic that only twenty percent of the wizarding population owned a smartphone equipped with Blue Fairy.

That twenty percent did not account for a mobile being passed around the dinner table, or for all the people peering over Reg's shoulder to see the latest Quidditch scores in a pub. Twenty percent might claim ownership, but the number of eyeballs on the stories - to use the metric the _Prophet_ prized so dearly - was much higher, and growing fast.

She had not been the first person to try to convince them to establish a digital presence, and certainly not the only person to leave that conversation throwing up her hands in disgust.

"I'm sorry, Caspar. It can't happen."

They had pressed her on this issue before and had no doubt they would again; it was too enticing, having the wife of the Head Auror and sister in law of the Head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement at their fingertips. But if they refused to adapt, any help Ginny might offer would only hurt them in the long run.

Kemp had not expected her to agree, she could tell, but he harrumphed like a disgruntled old bear even still.

"If _Portkey_ breaks this story, I'll personally see to it that Trulock gets paid more than you."

"Am I being paid? I hadn't noticed. Good luck, Caspar."

The door snapped shut behind her, and Caspar disappeared once more behind his mountain of parchment.


	4. Chapter 4

Cho Kelly. Aged 36. Witch. Witch mother, wizard father. Only child. Husband, Benjamin Kelly, muggle. One child, Emma Kelly, indeterminate status, not school age.

"It's just for records," the clerk hastened to assure her.

Cho ignored the clerk's encouraging smile, her dark eyes following instead the clerk's quill as it bobbed and swept in response to her answers, hovering patiently when she paused. Harry wondered how long it had been since she had seen a quill.

Her wand - laurel, ten inches, fairly rigid - was taken from her. It was an ordinary security precaution, and one which no one was ever eager to comply with, but Cho handed over her wand without a flicker of protest. She was then wanded down by the guard on duty, who looked at her in confusion when she tried to hand over her bag for inspection. Flustered, Cho busied herself adjusting the clasp on the bag, and Harry accepted the room key from the clerk.

Glancing down at the identifying tag he saw with a stab of annoyance that they had been given Room 569, the department's highest-security room, protected by all manner of secrecy charms and enchantments. This meant that his debriefing after the interview would take three times as long, but he had no doubt it was necessary. The mania surrounding this case had reached a fever pitch over the last few days - he wouldn't have been surprised if there were reporters hiding out here at the Ministry.

He led Cho through the secrecy sensor and fitted the key into the heavy oak door just on the opposite side, which opened into Room 569.

The room outfitted itself for them with a table, two chairs, a pitcher of water and glasses, a roll of parchment that unfurled from a case built into the table, and a steaming kettle and tea cups on a side board by the window. Although the room was deep underground, the window showed a blue sky with perfect flying conditions, as was Harry's preference - the rooms all laid out slightly differently for each Auror.

Cho glanced briefly at the window and her face became closed and remote.

He offered her water and tea but she would have nothing. Cho sat with her head bowed, staring at her nails in her lap.

"Thank you for agreeing to conduct the interview here at the Ministry," he said, somewhat awkwardly. "It saves us a few steps, in terms of paperwork."

She said nothing.

"As I told you at the hospital, I strongly recommend you have a representative present for this interview."

Her head snapped up immediately.

"Why should I need a representative? You said this was just an interview."

"It's an interview related to an ongoing investigation into a breach of the International Statute of Secrecy. Any testimony you offer will be part of the official record during the Wizengamot trial - and the international trial, if it comes to that."

"But I'm not - I haven't been charged with anything. I'm not a suspect."

Harry leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table between them. "There's never been a case like this before, Cho. There's no way to know how this might play out. A representative could - "

"You know how this could play out," Cho said, very quietly.

She could not have been more wrong.

Breaches of the International Statute of Secrecy were always a headache, usually involving drunken displays in high traffic areas, jilted lovers, childish pranks, and other instances that were difficult to investigate. The Ministry tended to let these cases resolve with a strong caution on the people or parents of children responsible. Taking the cases through prosecution would not only sap resources from the always-stressed DMLE; they also tended to be enormously unpopular with the wizarding public, who were often empathetic to mischievous behavior, be it alcohol or childhood-induced. It was far easier to wave a wand over the confused muggle and let a quick _Obliviate_ banish all of the difficult questions from their mind.

No amount of wand-waving, however, could erase Toby Elliott, the miracle boy from the Ailsworth fire, from the minds of the thousands of muggles who had read his story in Peterborough papers, in their local dailies after it had been picked up by the wire, the many across the globe discovering it fresh every day in the _Daily Mail'_ s coverage online. The story was firmly entrenched in the muggle imagination, and had led many people to wonder exactly what groundbreaking research was taking place at Peterborough City Hospital that had allowed a child with third degree burns over 60 percent of his body to emerge not only alive but entirely whole, and when this research might be shared with the rest of the world.

Cho was looking up at him, her expression unreadable. She was as inscrutable to him now as she had been when he was fifteen. But he needed to be better than that now - a great deal more than his adolescent pride depended on it.

"Well, we can leave that for now," he said, unrolling the parchment and pinning the edge down. While not strictly necessary, he found that note-taking put subjects more at ease, as it allowed them to forget that every word, hesitation and nervous tic would be preserved indefinitely in the Pocket Pensieves the DMLE opened for every case.. "I have a few general points I'd like to clear up, first. How long have you been employed at Peterborough City Hospital?"

"About nine years now."

"And your husband works there as well."

"Yes - Benjamin is an oncologist. A, that is, he's a cancer doctor."

"That must be difficult."

She was not sure how to take this. "Benjamin is a very good doctor. People come to PCH to be treated by him."

He smiled. "I meant for you. The stress, the long hours - "

"Oh." She looked down, fussing with the ID badge dangling from the lanyard she was still wearing. "It doesn't trouble me. Oncology was Benjamin's first love, sort of. His grandmother died of cancer - they were very close - when he was 12, and he wanted to be a doctor ever since. His work is part of who he is."

"That's admirable."

"He wouldn't like to hear you say that," she said, laughing a little. "He thinks it's somehow - like it should be every person's duty, to do whatever they can to help other people. If you're not, then whatever you're doing, no matter what you're accomplishing, he views it as if you're shirking your obligation."

"That must put some pressure on you."

"Maybe, but - it's good. It reminds me what's really important. That's what drew us to one another," she said. "I want to help people, too."

"I remember."

"Do you?" she asked, not without bitterness. "I didn't think that was your impression of me."

"The world looked a bit different to me at fifteen than it does now. The situation was more - complicated - than I think I understood."

She stood abruptly, her breath catching in her throat, then sat back down, forcing calm over herself like an ill-fitting jumper.

"Complicated, indeed. It's stayed with me. The DA - Marietta - that awful curse. I think about that more than Cedric. Isn't that terrible? I spent that whole year trying not to think about Cedric, because it was too confusing, it hurt too much. But it faded. And I didn't even notice, I was so caught up in that mess with - with everything - and it never faded, the way Cedric did."

She stood again, her hands bunching the front of her scrubs, buzzing with nervous energy.

"I was so ashamed I never told Benjamin. I told him everything, you know. I shouldn't tell you that, should I? But I did, I told him everything. But I couldn't bring myself to tell him about that. I couldn't stand to think of it. All of you, against me, I felt like it put me on the wrong side - that _I_ was wrong, no matter what I knew I believed - that I was no better than the Death Eaters, or Umbridge's little toadies."

Harry would not have known what to say to this even if he had wanted to respond, but Cho was not finished.

"Marietta didn't recover. I don't know if you knew. Or cared. Her parents kept her home with them during the war, and after, her mother got her an internship at the Ministry - but people were so cruel. Everyone knew her, what had happened. She gave it up after a few months."

"Hermione tried to lift the curse," Harry said, very quietly. "After the war. She felt badly. I think she had some success. But I know it wasn't - complete."

"People knew, anyway. She was - branded. She'd crossed you, and Hermione Granger. You can't come back from that, among wizards."

Harry remained silent.

"I say - 'people,' as if it's some abstract concept." She laughed. "But it was me. I stopped returning her owls, after a while. I couldn't stand it. She was just this living, breathing reminder of how I failed. I had wanted to be this brave person, this crusader for justice, to right wrongs and avenge Cedric, or at least try to make his death make sense somehow, and I couldn't, and I ruined my best friend's life trying to do it. I'd brought her into all this and I just left her. I haven't spoken to her in fifteen years. But I've never been able to get it out of my mind."

She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes, taking a slow, deep breath.

"You never failed. You must know that now."

"Must I?" Cho asked, raising her palms up so her hands rested against her forehead, as if in prayer . "I could never tell Benjamin what happened. It's silly, but somehow I had this fear he would think me a fraud, that he wouldn't respect me anymore. But it's only because I feel those things. It feels an awful lot like failure."

"We've all done things we're not proud of ," Harry told her. "You've just detailed at least a dozen things I'm not proud of. But how can you have failed? It wasn't a test, Cho. You were doing the best you could. If it didn't feel very brave or righteous, that's only because it never does from the inside looking out. I've tried to explain that to people. No one's ever listened."

"It just made me think you were more brave," she said, smiling. "I never understood, really. But Benjamin - people tell him he's brave, to do the work he does, you know, and it just outrages him. He hates that people would call him strong, when he's treating sick people."

"He holds people to a high standard."

"He's not a - he's not this humorless sort of person. He's more lighthearted than I am, probably. He's just restless, his brain's always working; he has so much energy, he needs to use it up."

"It's a lucky thing he's a doctor."

"What, and not a crime lord? True enough. His father was a doctor too, so, you know, it made sense. I really don't think Benjamin could have done anything else and been truly happy."

"Do you think you could have?"

She shrugged uncomfortably. "Perhaps I could have," she said. "It's not really worth considering, is it? I'm here now."

"It might be."

She looked away. "Believe me, I've thought about it," she said quietly.

The looming spectre of the investigation was drawing closer now, casting a long shadow that chilled them both. There was a haunted look in Cho's eyes, and she drew her arms around her torso, jostling her name badge, the noise echoing in the large, empty room.

Harry could not explain, to himself or to Hermione, when they reviewed his Pensieve records the following day, why he changed the subject. He told Hermione it was instinct - the subject was withdrawn, he wanted her to be more relaxed - and he told himself later that he had simply tried to shift the direction of the questioning and miscalculated where it would lead. But Harry did not believe either explanation.

"After all, I mean - you could have had a life as a witch. How did you adjust to living as a muggle? I grew up as a muggle, but it was before I had magic - it's hard to imagine going back. Does it feel normal, now?"

She looked up at him in surprise. There was a long pause, every beat of which hammered home to Harry what he had done.

"What's normal?" she asked at least. "I don't - we have a balance. We're happy. Nothing else has ever seemed to matter that much."

Cho grinned at him suddenly, sweet, a little playful, and he remembered a girl hovering across the Quidditch pitch many years ago.

"I mean - you're married. Does anything seem normal to you?"

Life with Ginny, Jamie, Al and Lily Luna was the closest Harry suspected his life had ever come to normalcy; still it seemed to be the most unlikely, bewildering, strange and wonderful series of occurrences any human, muggle or wizard, could have encountered.

"Sometimes," he said. "But only when I'm around Hermione and Ron. That puts things into perspective."

Cho laughed. "Are they together? I had always thought you and Hermione - "

"Oh, no," he said quickly. "They're married - two kids. Nine and seven. Me, as well, I've three - the oldest is starting at Hogwarts in the fall."

At her insistence he had to show her photos on his phone - James and Al playing Quidditch; Al and Jamie grinning with two giant ice cream cones on a recent trip to Diagon Alley; Lily Luna cuddling her cat Stella, beaming at her dance recital; the three of them at the beach with their cousins in front of a sandcastle they could easily have lived in.

And then, of course, Cho showed him photos, and told him stories, about Emma's first day of school, first trip to the zoo, her favorite picture books, how much she seriously she approached the task of picking out her socks in the morning. Emma and Lily Luna, they discovered, both had a love for butterflies and collected stickers.

They were watching a video on Cho's mobile of Emma dancing when he realized that Cho was crying.

"Cho?"

Emma, in the video, called "Mummy! Watch!"

"I think that I should have a representative," she said quietly.

All in all, Harry had botched the interview.

It had been an hour of questioning, one on one, no interference, with the prime suspect in a high profile case, and it had been a complete waste. Cho had been in a vulnerable position - might have confessed everything - and saved the Ministry months of effort, if Harry had stayed the course and continued questioning her.

Though he professed his innocence, he could tell from Hermione's scowl that they were both aware of exactly what he had done.


	5. Chapter 5

The room that Cho Kelly and her representative, Genie Marchbanks, currently occupied was a small, cozy chamber protected by the most powerful privacy charms possible, so strong that silence radiated like a physical force from the room - that even looking directly at the closed door required enormous strength of will.

Hermione stared it down, unblinking.

"Cho Chang's in there, then?" Lee Jordan's voice floated from behind her. "Have you spoken to her? Is she much different now, do you think? Being a muggle."

Hermione did not care if Cho had grown a second head, and did not bother to respond.

"Who's in there with her? I heard a rumor - "

"Genie Marchbanks."

Jordan raised his eyebrows.

"If it involves Genie Marchbanks, is it a rumor or an omen?"

After a short but sterling career in the DMLE as an investigator, Iphigenia Marchbanks had retired young and beatified by her colleagues, at which time everyone assumed she would host teas, garden, start a bookclub, and generally sink into genial, socially acceptable obscurity. When she had announced not two weeks after retiring that she was opening a consulting business on law and Ministry affairs for witches and wizards facing criminal charges, there had been a sense of genuine betrayal at the DMLE - that wise, kindly, reliable Marchbanks could take the knowledge and experience she had gained standing shoulder to shoulder with her former colleagues, then spin it against them for a profit, was unthinkable.

Hermione had known better. Unlike the detail-oriented, patiently toiling Hufflepuffs and scholarly Ravenclaws she had worked alongside, Marchbanks had been a Slytherin - a true snake in the grass. From their first meeting, Hermione had suspected that Marchbanks harbored more than humble ambitions for a middling career as a civil servant.

Marchbanks had spent the past ten years making an utter nuisance of herself to the Ministry. She was an expert performer in front of the Wizengamot and the press, having a sixth sense for the exact right spin to put on a case to engender sympathy, outrage or whatever public sentiment was necessary to get her clients acquitted, and her knowledge of the obscurities and loopholes in wizarding law had earned her the nickname "the only one Granger had ever feared."

This was not, of course, true. Hermione feared few things, apart from her own inadequacies. Much worse than fear, she grudgingly respected Genie. The older woman's tactics were unorthodox, unethical, and frankly dangerous in a case with stakes as high as those facing them now. But they worked.

"Well, she'll keep things interesting, at least," Jordan offered, then added: "Potter said to tell you, he's out for the rest of the afternoon gathering research. If Cho or Marchbanks need anything, I'm to see to them."

Jordan was Harry's former partner, before Harry became department head, and especially in the most egregious instances of Harry thumbing his nose at the Ministry, tended to protect his supervisor's interests at all costs. Hermione knew that Jordan enjoyed infuriating her now every bit as much as he had when she was a prefect at Hogwarts, which only made this worse.

"Anything else, ma'am?" Jordan asked her, a jaunty note in his voice.

"Not at the moment. Thank you, Jordan."

Hermione would not give him the satisfaction of asking where Harry had gone. She could find out from his records, and besides, there weren't many places in this case he could possibly visit for research, no matter what far-fetched excuse he might have come up with now to drag this out. The Elliotts' house, the hospital, Cho's neighborhood. They had no grounds to search her home yet, but Hermione had their legal team getting the necessary approvals right then. This investigation would not be derailed any longer.

She was so angry at Harry that she could feel it pulsing in her temple, a pounding, insistent, throbbing ache of anger. It had always been necessary for her to separate Harry, her oldest friend and beloved brother-in-law, from Potter, her arrogant, reckless subordinate who ran roughshod over his colleagues because he could get away with it, and there was no one who dared speak up to contradict him. But at times like this she longed to barge in, interrupt the quiet dinner he would have with Ginny tonight, and demand an explanation for his behavior.

Although Cho, the only witch present in the hospital at the time of the incident with the Elliott boy, had been their prime suspect from the instant the case had begun to make headlines in the Muggle papers, Harry had dragged his feet about bringing her in for questioning, insisting he needed to conduct background research "to gain a full understanding of the scope of the matter."

"The hospital's visitor logs from that morning and the night before are shabby - there could easily have been another witch or wizard present at the time of the incident. There's a magical healing center on top of the hospital - any one of those witches or wizards could have found their way in," he had protested when she first instructed him to interview Cho.

It was not until he checked the visitor logs, Apparition records, CCTV outside the hospital, and recorded footage around the hospital that Harry would admit Cho was their most likely suspect. Still, he waited another three days before bringing her in for questioning, lounging around talking with the boy's family and scaring his poor mother half to death.

Background research! Hermione would kill him.

In the time Harry had wasted derailing the investigation, the story had blown up in the muggle press. Any hope they had of containing it quietly - already a distant one by the time the story reached them - was utterly crushed.

On top of all that, Hermione was dealing with some of the most shocking behavior she had ever witnessed from the wizarding press. Desperate for any morsel of news, they had attempted to Polyjuice their way into DMLE meetings, bribe Department officials, fake Floo connections, and ambush and spy on the other Aurors working the case. Jordan and Braddock had taken to checking for Extendable Ears every time they went to the pub for lunch, and Bonnie Parsons-Prewett had talked about getting a Secret Keeper for her home until the case concluded, after she rooted out reporters hiding in her shrubs on two separate occasions.

"Granger? We need you, please," Priscilla Weller's voice called from the Broadcaster inside her pocket. "On the first floor, room 1002.

Weller was the director of communications for the DMLE, and 1002 was one of their secure conference rooms, so this almost certainly meant nothing good. Hermione went immediately, stuck her wand into the keyhole to unlock the door, and was greeted with a roomful of stricken faces.

"The _Prophet_ has a photo of Potter and Kelly," Weller said, without preamble. "Some weasel named Trulock Flooed asking for comment for the evening edition."

"No comment," Hermione said immediately. "It's an ongoing investigation."

Weller shook her head. "It would look better if we could come out in front on this. Can we call Kelly a suspect? A person of interest, at least?"

" _Not_ a suspect. She's been brought in for routine questioning regarding an ongoing investigation. Nothing more."

"We may have to rethink that," Gabe Corner, assistant director of media relations, said, half mumbling into his hands, not looking at Hermione.

She breathed deeply. "What does that mean, Corner."

Weller looked at her, somewhat fearfully. " _Portkey_ have posted just a moment ago," she said. "We know that they - they have something on Kelly."

There was no internet access at the Ministry - the presence of the disruptive magic in the Department of Mysteries essentially precluded the possibility - which had proved to be an agonizing problem as several wizarding blogs had began to build up steam. _Portkey_ , the most popular and the least scrupulous, had no masthead and didn't credit any writers. It might have been the work of one wizard or a dozen. Efforts to investigate the creators and funders had gone nowhere. Even the most minimally secure information on the internet was totally opaque to the Ministry, who did not have the resources or technical know-how to conduct that sort of investigation.

"We suspect the person or persons behind _Portkey_ may come from a muggle background" had been about as far as the communications team had been able to get.

 _Portkey_ tended to be right-leaning, but not always, and certainly not as much as the more radical _Augurey_ , where illustrations accompanying articles routinely depicted Hermione as a gorgon devouring her male colleagues.

After what felt like days, the owl arrived with the printout of the Portkey article. Hermione snatched it from the animal's talons and offered him a Galleon and treats for his services.

She skimmed to the pertinent part of the article, and read aloud.

"The Ministry have called in for questioning no wizards and only one witch, Cho Kelly (nee Chang) in connection with the Ailsworth fire. Kelly, a sometime paramour of Potter - " Hermione attempted to resist the urge to roll her eyes " - has lived as a muggle for the past 18 years, working as a radiology technician at Peterborough City Hospital, where Elliott was taken for treatment for his injuries sustained in the fire.

"Although the DMLE refuses to issue a formal statement, _Portkey_ has determined that Kelly is being questioned under suspicion of using magic to heal Elliott's injuries sustained in the fire, which constitutes a breach of the International Statute of Secrecy. Though Kelly has not been formally charged, through investigation of records at Peterborough City Hospital and interviewing key muggle witnesses, a source for _Portkey_ has found that this is not the first instance in which Kelly has been guilty of this offense."

Hermione went on to read about several instances in which _Portkey_ asserted that Cho had used magic to heal or relieve patients at the hospital of suffering from various ailments, her brain dissociating from the words and racing through dozens of options for managing and containing this news. As the owls and interdepartmental memos began to flood in, she knew that none of them were viable.

She set the paper down. Weller, Corner, and the rest were gazing at her in fear and wonder.

"No comment," she told them, calmly. "Our comment is, no comment."

There was silence as Hermione left the room and closed the door behind her, but her head pounded like a drum with a single refrain - _charge Cho Kelly._

* * *

 **A/N:** A very happy new year to you! I hope you are enjoying this story so far. Many thanks to all those who have reviewed, I truly appreciate the feedback. Please let me know what you think, it really helps to hear your thoughts!


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